We are dedicated to celebrating milestones, unearthing lesser-known gems, and promoting discussions around LPs and new music that might not receive attention.
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Joined January 2009
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Shatter the Standards retweeted
Black women get told to finish healing before they ask to be loved well. Ari Lennox keeps the mess and the wanting on the table and hands the work of the relationship back to whoever wants her.
More: shatterthestandards.com/p/bl…
Shatter the Standards retweeted
Plus Snoh Aalegra’s sixteen past lives, a Durham singer who took her name from Showgirls, and one candlelit slow jam we couldn't get behind.
The list: shatterthestandards.com/p/pu…
Shatter the Standards retweeted
Who is the Black Messiah? We trace D’Angelo’s spiritual inheritance, finding salvation in ordinary Black lives and in the power of breath, love, and music to trouble an oppressive world.
More: shatterthestandards.com/p/wh…
Shatter the Standards retweeted
A reluctant encounter with Voodoo becomes a reconsideration of pleasure and political freedom. D’Angelo’s music raises questions about how Black artists inherit, express, and sell desire.
More: shatterthestandards.com/p/to…
Shatter the Standards retweeted
Smokey Robinson, Al Green and Prince offered D’Angelo different possibilities for the voice. His singing reveals how closely he studied them while developing his own approach to soul.
More: shatterthestandards.com/p/th…
Shatter the Standards retweeted
Back from two years off, Doechii stacks puns, ballroom slang, and private-jet money into a Swamp Session freestyle, and a joke-dense second verse makes it a good one.
Our deciphering: shatterthestandards.com/p/de…
Shatter the Standards retweeted
Across three albums and decades of silence, D’Angelo kept testing the limits of rhythm, faith, sexuality, and artistic control while resisting the image built around him.
More: shatterthestandards.com/p/th…
Shatter the Standards retweeted
JID runs Joyce Wrice down across state lines, Laila! stretches summer into October, and three more R&B songs about wanting a little more.
The list: shatterthestandards.com/p/i-…
Shatter the Standards retweeted
From Igbo Landing to a slave freighter rebuilt in deep space to a Watts block, Black stories of flight belong to the people who stayed, and every escape in them keeps sending word home.
More: shatterthestandards.com/p/wh…
Shatter the Standards retweeted
Plus Victoria Monét’s filthy Brandy flip, Nao’s living-room hymn for D'Angelo, and Lucky Daye getting blocked on a trap phone.
The list: shatterthestandards.com/p/st…
Shatter the Standards retweeted
The hopes invested in Songs in the Key of Life were matched by the success of a monumental album that finally appeared at the end of the summer of 1976 and is one of the best albums ever recorded.
More: shatterthestandards.com/p/ha…
Shatter the Standards retweeted
Plus, Maeta wants her cake and to eat it too; Mai Anna stays on her colorway, and an EarthGang rapper writes a love song to a brain chemical.
The list: shatterthestandards.com/p/r-…
Shatter the Standards retweeted
What made Nina Simone such an unusual musician in her own time, and still in ours? The defiant artist people are so eager to glorify emerged from a particular form of isolation.
More: shatterthestandards.com/p/th…
Shatter the Standards retweeted
LAYA drags R&B to the rodeo, PJ counts the time she can’t get back, and the youngest voice in the batch makes the most grown promise.
The list: shatterthestandards.com/p/ci…
Shatter the Standards retweeted
A murder charge in Jackson moved a hanging death out of the lynching frame and into the one America never learned to watch: the violence that kills Black women through men they know.
More: shatterthestandards.com/p/wh…
Shatter the Standards retweeted
Jhené Aiko and Kendrick Lamar throw the function of the year. Plus, Tinashe files for her freedom, and Danielle Ponder puts a false god on trial.
The list: shatterthestandards.com/p/no…
Shatter the Standards retweeted
Duane Davis described the killing of Tupac in police rooms, on YouTube, and in a memoir before Nevada charged him. The conviction rests on an entertainment product rather than detective work.
More: shatterthestandards.com/p/th…
Shatter the Standards retweeted
Beyoncé unseals a Pharrell duet from 2006. Plus: Joyce Wrice catches flight, Daley comes home, and EARTHGANG’s Olu can’t sleep.
The list: shatterthestandards.com/p/th…
Shatter the Standards retweeted
In March 1971, James Brown and his JB’s, revitalized by the presence of Bootsy Collins, blew up L’Olympia during a three-day stop in Paris.
More: shatterthestandards.com/p/ja…
Shatter the Standards retweeted
Tamia ends an eight-year silence with a vow, Lalah Hathaway heads home, and a Tottenham loverboy gets left on read.
The list: shatterthestandards.com/p/gr…
